Can he? The New York Times reported: "Consumer groups and lawmakers have blamed the Fed under Mr. Bernanke's predecessor, Alan Greenspan, for not cracking down early on dubious mortgages practices. High-risk mortgages fed the housing boom and led to its collapse.
Mr. Bernanke, who took over the Fed in February 2006, eventually pushed through tougher rules, though some said the changes came too late to ease the mortgage crisis."
I love when the NY Times reports "some said" without citing names or explaining that everyone fighting for the rights of homeowers and predatory lending victims said it, over and over again. The problem: no one was listening, including Bernanke and the New York Times which admitted in a column in the Business section that it were warned in 2000 and then ignored the problem for seven years.
Baseline Scenario, a progressive economic site said of the man insiders call "Helicopter Ben" because of his affinity for spreading lucre from above to financial institutions (whether they need it or not,) "Disregarding his organization's disappointing track record in this regard, he claims that the Fed can handle this issue perfectly well going forward. He thus adds his voice to the cacophony of financial sector lobbyists favoring the status quo.
At the same time, Bernanke and the lobbyists talk about the importance of consumer confidence for the recovery. But how can you expect anyone to have confidence enough to spend and borrow when so many people have been so badly treated by the financial sector in recent years?"
Economist Simon Johnson adds, "The Fed, it seems, just wants to defend its turf." Beyond that, it wants the banking industry to control the whole financial reform process to make sure that all change is contained, co-opted and controlled.
Ben Bernanke is the running to become our economic czar of czars. He is now mounting a campaign for reappointment claiming he stopped a recession from turning into a depression. That is debateable. Some like Eliot Spitzer who knows where the bodies on Wall Street are buried says, "The Fed is a Ponzi scheme, an inside job, it is outrageous, it is time for congress to say enough of this."
The irony: many in the Administration seem to want to give him and the Fed even more power in the misguided belief he is operating in the public interest up in that netherworld above politics.
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